


Healthy Living

by SullenSiren (lorax)



Category: Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Genre: Food, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-21
Updated: 2006-06-21
Packaged: 2017-10-08 13:56:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorax/pseuds/SullenSiren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He only cheats while he's cheating, which is funny in one of those ways where it shouldn't be funny, but it is."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Healthy Living

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the informal snackfood challenge issued by the prolific and wonderful . My snack food was "Pringles".

** Healthy Living **

Tess feeds them rabbit food. Macrobiotic or low-carb or low-fat or organic or all of it. Danny can't remember. He can remember how far they had to run the wires to get through the window at the Rockwell exhibit, exactly what kind of wine he had the first time he saw Tess, and just how heavy the most perfect diamond in the United States felt in his hand, but he can't remember what the green-leafed rabbit food he's eating is called.

"It's good for you," Tess says. And what he hears is "I'm controlling what you eat because I can't control what you do," and he knows that they're on their last legs, again, but he isn't ready to admit what that means, so he eats tasteless shit and pretends to go to a normal nine to five job when both of them know he couldn't ever manage it. But it's an illusion, and for the moment Tess makes herself all right with that.

He wonders how much she doesn't see, sometimes. He meets Rusty in Paris ("Sales conference," he tells Tess, winking and she smiles and centers the vase on the table in the den.) and they case a jewelry showing that's a little too easy to be fun, and a little too rich to leave alone.

Rusty eats Pringles one-by-one, and the salt glistens on his lip and when Danny leans in to taste it, he tells himself it's because of the rabbit food. Because if he had real food, he could resist the taste of salt and Rusty and the sharp tingle of it on his tongue when it tangles with Rusty's. (He stays on his diet in Paris, ordering whatever looks limp and green because if he can't be faithful to Tess' life and he can't be faithful to Tess' bed, he'll at least stick to her damn diet, and he could probably stand to lose a pound or two anyway.)

He only cheats while he's cheating, which is funny in one of those ways where it shouldn't be funny, but it is. He tastes the food - salty or sweet, full of calories or fat - off of Rusty's lips. Rusty dribbles too-sweet cheap ice cream down his stomach, the cold making muscles suck in and quiver, and Danny follows the path down, licking cold cream off hot skin. In his mind, he's thinking of the angle he could use to explain ot to Tess, but he doesn't think an angle will work, soon, and he's not sure if he's upset by that, or upset by the fact that he should be more upset.

When he sinks to his knees to suck Rusty off, Rusty grins - cocky and sensual, a mint between his teeth - and says he should have worn edible underwear. Rusty knows the angles, knows the lies and cons Danny uses to make this all right for them. (It's not all right. It's not what they should be doing. But Danny licks sweat and salt and icy flavor from the corner of Rusty's mouth and it can't be anything but RIGHT even if it isn't all right.)

When he sucks and swallows and Rusty slumps boneless onto the bed, Danny grins and neither of them make the joke that "at least it's organic" but it's in both their heads and they know that.

There's always empty pringle jars, candy wrappers, pretzel bags strewn across the bed and Danny always wonders if that would bother him, if he let this be an always-thing instead of a while-Tess-can't-see thing. Rusty sees the details, but Danny sees the big picture. The big idea. It's how he works. The little view is potato-chip kisses and heated nights between jobs. It's soft Tess arms around his shoulders and a low voice that says "I love you".

The big view is that when Rusty thinks he can't see, he watches Danny. The big view is that "I love you" will end with a "but" on the end. The big view is that the in-between is never enough.

Danny goes big. Hotel heists and jewel thefts. Ancient masks that are hard as hell to move. No halfway. No small and safe and lucrative. The thrill is in the hunt, not the kill, and a lion's more fun that a rabbit.

The big picture is that when you go big, you have to have something to go back to, and Danny's been stringing two somethings along for too long. Soon, he'll have to reel one in and let one go.

But for now, it's salt-and-sugar kisses and sweet arms and the vague feeling that this is RIGHT, even though it's wrong.   
~~


End file.
